Ryanair on Rail

[sprunt]

If I wanted to gamble why would I pay extra to do so on a screen in a seat back? I could do it on my phone. Or do I have to pay extra for a seat that isn't in a carriage that has been shielded to prevent me getting a mobile signal?

 

[stuu]

Ok, another example.
Ryanair have been given a open access licence to run 3 trains a day from London Euston to Glasgow and back, calling only at Manchester Piccadilly both ways. Paths have been found, so no issues there.
Tickets will go on sale 6 months ahead.
A single ticket from Euston to Manchester will cost £20 and £25 to Glasgow. Manchester to Glasgow will cost £15. Prices will rise accordingly nearer the date of departure.
A surcharge of £8 per ticket will be payable if you purchase the ticket at the station, including machines. No surcharge if bought online with Ryanair.
There are 300 seats on the train and you have the option to purchase the seat of your choice, if available. Prices for seats will range from £8 to £12 depending on the seat. No more than 300 people can catch this train, no standing. If you don't purchase a seat you will be assigned whatever seat is left the day before you travel, via email.
You can take a small bag that can fit under the chair in front of you or on your lap for free. A small suitcase will cost you £15, a large suitcase £30.
A bike will cost £18 and a pet will cost £15. If you purchase suitcase / bike you will be sent labels to attach to your items the day before travel.
Your items will be scanned by staff as you enter the platform at Euston, same at Piccadilly. No scanning needed when the train arrives in Glasgow. Scanning will take place at Glasgow and Piccadilly on the return journey but not at Euston.
You can purchase tea / coffee on the train but no meals. You can only purchase meals online to save waste.
There will be no delay repay with this service, you will have the option online, to purchase insurance.
Internet will be available at a cost and 2 carriages on this train will have tv screens at the back of each chair, you can pay to watch films and gamble , at a cost.
Does this sound better?

No. It still sounds awful

The vast majority of train journeys are not planned anything like 6 months ahead. That is very different to air travel which for most people happens 1-3 times a year, and is something people book ahead for

Also Network Rail can't even provide certainty over timetables 12 weeks out, let alone 6 months

What is the problem this idea solves?

 

[NSE]

I fly regularly through Manchester T3 and I can categorically tell you for a fact that this is completely untrue.


That's already the reality in the airline industry.

The headline fare is cheaper if you take a small cabin bag and you're happy to play middle seat roulette. But most people need to take more with them than that, and once you start adding any sort of luggage then prices rapidly ramp up to the same- or even higher- than that charged by the 'full service' airlines.

My experience is that, once you add a bag, EasyJet are usually no cheaper than Loganair. I can have a weekend away with a small cabin bag- providing I'm not intending to go shopping- but anything more than that and I need a bigger bag. What's even more interesting is the pricing on EasyJet. On quite a few flights recently the 15kg hold luggage option has been cheaper than the large cabin bag.

On Aer Lingus, meanwhile, you can only take a large cabin bag on board if you pay a fee, otherwise it goes in the hold for free.

People only started taking cabin bags because of the hold fees, and the airlines have now realised that the cabin bags are the bags that cause delays at the gate. So now they're trying to price everyone back into checking bags into the hold.

Yeah I’m with you. I’ve done some backpacking and when people have asked my advice I’ve often warned them against just assuming budget is cheapest. By the time you add in the extras you need, and the fact it’s from the airport not served by frequent and cheap public transport (Bangkok springs to mind here, DMK versus BKK) and the full service is cheaper.

 

[Energy]

The 2 boys will only need a couple of t shirts and shorts for the weeks holiday, they ware them all in layers on the flight out

T-shirts would be uncomfortable but doable but I'm slightly baffled how someone could wear 3+ pairs of shorts at the same time, presumably on top of 5+ pairs of underwear.

That's already the reality in the airline industry.

The headline fare is cheaper if you take a small cabin bag and you're happy to play middle seat roulette. But most people need to take more with them than that, and once you start adding any sort of luggage then prices rapidly ramp up to the same- or even higher- than that charged by the 'full service' airlines.

Exactly, they are very efficient organisations but the price isn't much cheaper, it's just hidden.

Ryanair gets away with the extra charges by being upfront about it, if people complain it's their fault for not understanding that random seat allocation is random.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Not in my experience

I must imagine all the hundreds of people standing in a line by the Ryanair bag drop. Maybe they're just a modern art installation.

Ryanair gets away with the extra charges by being upfront about it, if people complain it's their fault for not understanding that random seat allocation is random.

They're not upfront about it, though. You have to get to the end of the booking process- including putting in passenger details- before you can find out the true cost. And the 'bundles' on the front screen offered by Ryanair and EasyJet are misleading too, the 'bundles' usually being more expensive than picking and choosing as you go through the booking process.

 

[gerryuk]

The vast majority of train journeys are not planned anything like 6 months ahead. That is very different to air travel which for most people happens 1-3 times a year, and is something people book ahead for

Also Network Rail can't even provide certainty over timetables 12 weeks out, let alone 6 months

What is the problem this idea solves?

But most people know when their annual leave is throughout the year, same with school holidays. If i can get cheaper tickets booking 6 months ahead, i and many others will choose that option.
I will happily pay peanuts to travel to Manchester / Glasgow from Euston with Ryanair on rail, as there is now competition in the market. You and others can stick with Avanti, but that's your choice. I would say that the three trains each way with Ryanair to Glasgow and back will be packed and in the long term, it will be good for you and others who stick with Avanti.
As Avanti loose thousands of customers each week to the competition they will have to innovate, come up with a better product and better pricing or die. Competition is good and it will be good for the rail industry, particularly on long distance services.

 

[The Planner]

But most people know when their annual leave is throughout the year, same with school holidays. If i can get cheaper tickets booking 6 months ahead, i and many others will choose that option.

Really? I pick and choose when I take mine when I want it. Its not set.

As Avanti loose thousands of customers each week to the competition they will have to innovate, come up with a better product and better pricing or die. Competition is good and it will be good for the rail industry, particularly on long distance services.

How will they die when Ryanair is running 3 trains a day to the six times as many Avanti do?

 

[6Gman]

Ok, another example.
Ryanair have been given a open access licence to run 3 trains a day from London Euston to Glasgow and back, calling only at Manchester Piccadilly both ways. Paths have been found, so no issues there.
Tickets will go on sale 6 months ahead.
A single ticket from Euston to Manchester will cost £20 and £25 to Glasgow. Manchester to Glasgow will cost £15. Prices will rise accordingly nearer the date of departure.
A surcharge of £8 per ticket will be payable if you purchase the ticket at the station, including machines. No surcharge if bought online with Ryanair.
There are 300 seats on the train and you have the option to purchase the seat of your choice, if available. Prices for seats will range from £8 to £12 depending on the seat. No more than 300 people can catch this train, no standing. If you don't purchase a seat you will be assigned whatever seat is left the day before you travel, via email.
You can take a small bag that can fit under the chair in front of you or on your lap for free. A small suitcase will cost you £15, a large suitcase £30.
A bike will cost £18 and a pet will cost £15. If you purchase suitcase / bike you will be sent labels to attach to your items the day before travel.
Your items will be scanned by staff as you enter the platform at Euston, same at Piccadilly. No scanning needed when the train arrives in Glasgow. Scanning will take place at Glasgow and Piccadilly on the return journey but not at Euston.
You can purchase tea / coffee on the train but no meals. You can only purchase meals online to save waste.
There will be no delay repay with this service, you will have the option online, to purchase insurance.
Internet will be available at a cost and 2 carriages on this train will have tv screens at the back of each chair, you can pay to watch films and gamble , at a cost.
Does this sound better?

Marginally.

But - as others have pointed out - Piccadilly is a non-starter.

And good luck putting together the software to manage all those variations.

And a financial case to install and man the screening at stations for three trains a day.

Really? I pick and choose when I take mine when I want it. Its not set.

How will they die when Ryanair is running 3 trains a day to the six times as many Avanti do?

Or, indeed, when RyanairRail won't be serving Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle etc. ?

 

[Peter Wilde]

Lots of misconceptions and evidence-free arguments have appeared in all this. Like:

“Most people on Ryanair have found out how to travel without luggage”. Well, that kind of statement is disputed by some. However, let’s assume it is true to some extent. Why can it happen? Well there are at least two special factors at play. One is that a lot of Ryanair customers are off to holidays in warm places, and so don’t need to take much. The other thing is that Ryanair is just one of many competing airlines. So people who don’t need luggage can take advantage of Ryanair pricing. Everybody else who does need luggage will be found, disproportionately, on other airlines. Where there are still huge crowds along the luggage conveyors in arrival halls.

"People only started taking cabin bags because of the hold fees”. No. Lots of us take as much as possible in a cabin bag because of the high risk that the airline will lose your hold bag!

So copying the cheap airlines is not a good idea for railways, which have to serve diverse needs in very different circumstances, as many have explained above. This has just been an amusingly frothy little debate.

 

[The exile]

The joy of rail travel is being able to turn up, buy a ticket and plonk yourself on the next train. While some longer distance journeys lend themselves to booking in advance, most shorter distance trips' competitor is the car where people just turn up and go.

Not only the joy - an absolutely essential element for all but the longest journeys.

 

[Bletchleyite]

T-shirts would be uncomfortable but doable but I'm slightly baffled how someone could wear 3+ pairs of shorts at the same time, presumably on top of 5+ pairs of underwear.

Basically nobody does that, they just take very little stuff in the free underseat bag.

Exactly, they are very efficient organisations but the price isn't much cheaper, it's just hidden.

Ryanair gets away with the extra charges by being upfront about it, if people complain it's their fault for not understanding that random seat allocation is random.

You really do have to have had your head in a bucket of sand for the past 20 years to not know how Ryanair works.

 

[Energy]

Basically nobody does that, they just take very little stuff in the free underseat bag.

I'm not expecting anybody to so, I was commenting on OP saying that the children can wear all the clothes they'd need.

 

[bspahh]

I created a poll for how much you would take for a 2 night trip using public transport

How much Luggage do you Take for a 2 Night Trip?

How much luggage do you take if you were going to be away from home for 2 nights trip by public transport?

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[stuu]

But most people know when their annual leave is throughout the year, same with school holidays

Citation please

And anyway, the point is that vanishingly few rail journeys are people going on a big holiday. A weekend away, or other leisure journeys of course, but very few of them are the sort of journeys people plan months in advance.

Again, what is the problem this would solve?

 

[gerryuk]

Again, what is the problem this would solve?

Well for a start it will end the current monopoly of Avanti. Both you and i will have a choice, if you want to travel by rail from Euston to Manchester and Glasgow. If you want to travel with Avanti and pay their fares fair play to you, but i and others would prefer to pay less and travel with another operator. Its called competition and competition is good for the consumer.

 

[stuu]

Well for a start it will end the current monopoly of Avanti. Both you and i will have a choice, if you want to travel by rail from Euston to Manchester and Glasgow. If you want to travel with Avanti and pay their fares fair play to you, but i and others would prefer to pay less and travel with another operator. Its called competition and competition is good for the consumer.

That's a completely different argument though

 

[NSE]

Well for a start it will end the current monopoly of Avanti. Both you and i will have a choice, if you want to travel by rail from Euston to Manchester and Glasgow. If you want to travel with Avanti and pay their fares fair play to you, but i and others would prefer to pay less and travel with another operator. Its called competition and competition is good for the consumer.

You already have other options. Kings Cross is right next door and you can travel via Edinburgh, so is St. Pancras and you can EMR & XC it via Sheffield. They have their pros and cons. I’ve mix and matched many a journey to keep the cost down. Similar to your argument about sacrificing luggage to keep it cheap, I put money over time. It already exists on the railway. Sure it could be better. But not through your proposal.

 

[gerryuk]

That's a completely different argument though

No its not, its really not.

 

[6Gman]

I created a poll for how much you would take for a 2 night trip using public transport

How much Luggage do you Take for a 2 Night Trip?

How much luggage do you take if you were going to be away from home for 2 nights trip by public transport?

www.railforums.co.uk

I could probably take all my stuff in a shoulder bag.

My wife, on the other hand, . . .

 

[Bletchleyite]

I could probably take all my stuff in a shoulder bag.

My wife, on the other hand, . . .

Regardless of whether you pack heavy or light, there's more than twice the amount of fabric in 2XL clothes as S ones.

 

[6Gman]

You already have other options. Kings Cross is right next door and you can travel via Edinburgh, so is St. Pancras and you can EMR & XC it via Sheffield. They have their pros and cons. I’ve mix and matched many a journey to keep the cost down. Similar to your argument about sacrificing luggage to keep it cheap, I put money over time. It already exists on the railway. Sure it could be better. But not through your proposal.

And for Manchester there are LNR/TfW/Northern combinations that can be remarkably cheap (and also serve intermediate points).

Regardless of whether you pack heavy or light, there's more than twice the amount of fabric in 2XL clothes as S ones.

Well, neither of us or L never mind 2XL!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well, neither of us or L never mind 2XL!

Perhaps not, but I am, which helps to explain why I would find a long weekend away with just an underseat bag rather difficult!

 

[Tetchytyke]

"People only started taking cabin bags because of the hold fees”. No. Lots of us take as much as possible in a cabin bag because of the high risk that the airline will lose your hold bag!

I regularly travel Loganair, where a 15 kg hold bag is included as standard. I don’t see people with loads of cabin baggage, but I do see people waiting at the baggage carousel after the flight.

But yes, there are those who are worried that the airline will lose the bag. I don’t think that applies to most people with cabin baggage though- especially now most cabin baggage has to go in the hold anyway. Maybe things will go back the other way when liquids restrictions change (due to the new CT scanners) later this year.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I regularly travel Loganair, where a 15 kg hold bag is included as standard. I don’t see people with loads of cabin baggage, but I do see people waiting at the baggage carousel after the flight.

But yes, there are those who are worried that the airline will lose the bag. I don’t think that applies to most people with cabin baggage though- especially now most cabin baggage has to go in the hold anyway. Maybe things will go back the other way when liquids restrictions change (due to the new CT scanners) later this year.

I think there's more paranoia about lost bags than justified, really. Out of about 250 flight segments (far more than most people will do in their lifetimes) I've had bags delayed twice (arrived the next day) and actually lost 0 times. Some airports are notorious for them not making connections (Schiphol is one) but most people choose direct flights.

I furthermore suspect that of the ones that do get totally lost, quite a lot are due to people who don't take the old labels off.

 

[Technologist]

The poster is working on the basis that the passenger service model of Ryanair is where they made the difference. The economics of low cost carriers have far more elements to them.

The primary element of low cost carrier operation is aircraft utilization, it costs the same to buy the plane whether you fly it or not and you rent gates and other infrastructure by the hour. You may wonder why there are very few "long haul low cost carriers", the simple reason that if you fly an aircraft for 15 hours you invariably end up utilizing it a lot so the legacy carriers were competitive here anyway.

The reasons why legacy carriers had poor utilization on short haul included.

1: Flying in and out of congested hub airports with dodgy baggage handling
2: Using short haul flights to feed long haul hubs meaning aircraft timetables had to synchronize to allow passengers to connect, resulting in aircraft sitting on the ground to enable this. Also many short haul flights would have a transfer because most flights would be either too or from a hub rather than point to point.
3: Aircraft turn around procedure's based on long haul operations where it might not matter economically if the plane sits at a gate for hours on end.
4: Simplistic pricing models which left plenty of seats unfilled

The low cost carriers optimise their schedules to keep aircraft in the air for as much of the time as they can, they operate from simpler airports generally out of town where the landing fees are low and often subsidized by local government. Not having in flight meals speeds up the turn around as does limiting hold baggage by charging for it. Filling every seat by using optimised pricing means that you maximize the revenue per flight meaning that at least some of the tickets can be sold cheaper than the legacy carriers costs.

You can't copy the low cost carriers principle business model change which is to operate point to point between airports/stations with simple ground operations (unless you build a new high speed line). Rail doesn't really have a problem with empty seats either, though potentially it could drive more traffic at off peak times with dynamic pricing.

The closest you could get to a low cost airline model on the rails are high intensity single use railways, which requires infrastructure changes to a much greater degree than air travel does. This message should be put about by rail advocates more, if you use railways more intensively you get more passengers but your costs do not increase proportionally, ergo they should be cheaper per passenger over time.

I used to work in aerospace, so I've vastly over simplified the above if anyone wants to knit pick.

 

[sprunt]

Perhaps not, but I am, which helps to explain why I would find a long weekend away with just an underseat bag rather difficult!

It also depends on the purpose of the trip, of course. If I'm just going on a city break I'll take a couple of clean t-shirts, pairs of pants and pairs of socks. If I'm going to a wedding I'll be taking lots more, and transporting them more carefully.

 

[flitwickbeds]

The fallback position if people didn't volunteer would be the status quo. People would stand, and get paid £££ for delay repay, when there are people with a seat who would have been happy to be delayed for £. Its not a flight. Its a train. The railway can "decide" in the way that it decides which passengers get a cheap advance fare.

So you are proposing that people would be able to stand on these trains as well, not just mandatory seating and once it's all booked, no one else can book?

There will be no delay repay with this service, you will have the option online, to purchase insurance.

So, if I don't purchase insurance, and the last train of the day is cancelled, I'm entitled to no compensation or help at all?

 

[superalbs]

So you are proposing that people would be able to stand on these trains as well, not just mandatory seating and once it's all booked, no one else can book?


So, if I don't purchase insurance, and the last train of the day is cancelled, I'm entitled to no compensation or help at all?

Lol, passenger rights as an extra. Not even Ryanair does that. Sounds like hell.

 

[LampPete]

What about toilets? 50p a go? Pay on the door?
There is a lot of “most people” comments which I always find difficult to understand because how on earth does a passenger on a train know what the other few hundred people are up to?!
But I think a big difference between a cheep flight and a train journey is the destination! If your going to Glasgow for a weekend away your going to need more clothes as it’s a bit chilly up there ! If you’re going to sit by a pool In Benidorm then there is a bit more scope for less luggage. And are people really booking train tickets 6 months in advance?!
I need to get to Gateshead from the midlands on Thursday eve and I’ve not even started thinking about it yet as I know I don’t need to plan and book luggage etc.
if I were flying then it would already be booked as well as a taxi to the airport.
They are just different modes of transport serving different needs!

 

[Mountain Man]

IFE is dying with the proliferation of WiFi on planes. So transfering a concept to trains that is already on the way out makes no sense